Monthly Archives: November 2013

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The graduation quilt is layered. There was a bit of a delay as I searched for 20 minutes or so for the stupid safety pins to pin baste it. They container – which is not exactly small – was not in its normal location. It’s a decorate tin- it’s a good size – it’s not flat on top so nothing can be stacked on it to hide it – it’s always in the sewing room on one shelf or another. Not in sight. But then I remembered when I had the leak in the sewing room and had to pull things out of closets and move things around. Then the search was really on and after checking several spots multiple times – found it on the edge of a shelf where it should not have fit, and it really didn’t, because the only thing holding it in place on the edge of the shelf was a quilt hanging next to it . But the quilt is layered, one crease on the back has been removed and repined so not I think I just have to decide what color thread I want to quilt it with (or perhaps more correctly, what colors of thread do I have where I have enough to quilt this). Then again – I could do each block in different thread since I have all those spools of thread a friend gave me when cleaning out her sister’s sewing stuff.

It also was sock washing day — the first day this fall/winter that I had gone through all the hand knit socks in my drawer (except for one pair in there and one on my feet). So grabbed the bag of them (I have one of those reusable grocery totes in my closet – the perfect size to collect all the socks after I wear them and then tote them all to the laundry room.) So my sewing room smells a bit “wet sheep” like right now.

Twenty-two pairs of socks. Having to wash them every two weeks isn’t bad but I think being able to go a whole MONTH would be even better! LOL I need to get knitting. Actually it’s not a big deal to wash them – they’ll be dry by tomorrow sometime and I’ll be good for another couple weeks.

I need to get my Dreambird edging finished off so I can start on another “swing knitting” project. I found a cute little pattern on Ravelry for a swing cowl that should be really easy after Dreambird ….or I may just to wind the yarn now for that and see which one I decide to work on tonight 😉

I just realized it’s dinner time – no wonder I’m getting hungry. The quilting elves did not make dinner for me will I was pin basting that quilt so I guess I’ll have to do it myself.

I also just came across this pattern . I have some royal blue and bright yellow yarn that I think would be fun in this one.

and I love the edging on this one – but then I really like a lot of her patterns.

I’ve been puttering again this morning and need to get dressed and busy around here. The backing fabric for the quilt I need to get layered and quilted is out of the dryer and waiting to be ironed. That is top of my list this a.m. (okay – top of the list right after getting dressed and finding some brunch). I will NOT stay on the computer the better part of the day doing “stuff” like yesterday (browsing Ravelry patterns, catching up on blogs, playing games — even tho I have a bunch of Ravelry project pages to update)– I will not be back on the computer till that quilt is at least layered! I’ve procrastinated long enough.

In the meantime, I think there’s about 8 quilters signed up and approved so far for next year’s Dog Pound Pals Adoption Society applique project and several more awaiting final confirmation. That’s great! Please remember you MUST buy the pattern before signing up. You can’t answer the question needed to get the password to the protected pages without the EQ Boutique file since the answer to the question I ask is found only within that file.

The Drop Stitch scarf is done blocking. Can’t wait to wear it – such a fun pop of color and texture.

And my hat experiment worked — I got it to shrink a little without wrecking it entirely! 🙂 Time will tell if I shrunk it enough since I’m sending it to Mom – it will match a pair of mittens I’m also sending to her.

I was afraid the cream-colored yarn might shrink in too much since that one is not a superwash but it does seem to have shrunk the size just slightly which hopefully is enough without altering the look of the hat.

I added the last feather to my Dreambird last night! But then decided I wanted to add a bit of edging along the top curve to neaten things up a bit – my gray yarn just doesn’t fill in like the feather yarn since it’s more linen feeling – so I picked up stitches all long the top curve and am just knitting a few rows of stockinette stitch which should then curl forward and look similar to I-cord without the bother of making I cord — I used this on a different project and really liked it so hopefully I will like it on this one too. So that project should be finished off this weekend! Then I need to get serious about deciding what yarn I want to use for the Art Deco project I’m starting on New Year’s Eve. There are more projects added in the Ravelry project pages for this wrap and so pretty. I need to lay out all the possible yarns and make a final decision. Are you going to knit along?

Sign ups for this project are officially slated to start Dec. 1 but you can start signing up now. BEFORE you email me to sign up– be sure you have read the information about this applique project and understand how it will work. Click that cute dog button in the sidebar to find out what you need to know about this project and what you need TO DO before emailing me (justquiltin@charter.net) to sign up.

So sign ups are open — you must sign up between now and January 25, 2015. Sign ups will close that date and no one else will be able to join the group after that date.

We’ll begin actual work on this project the first Saturday in February, continuing each first Saturday of each month thereafter.

The Drop Stitch scarf is blocking. Doesn’t it look pretty all blocked open. Should be pretty quick to dry too.

The stranded hat I made — so far so good in trying to shrink it a bit. I’m not sure is is really shrinking any but (1) when I got it wet the blue did not run into the cream so that was good (2) and so far it’s not shrinking or felting wierdly. Only one of the yarns is 100% wool that would shrink the other is superwash so I was afraid one would shrink up more than the other. Time to check the dryer and see how it’s coming.

Judy is a friend but I think for her sake and mine (and Vince’s) it is a very very good thing that she lives in Texas and I live in Wisconsin.

Yes, you know this is another blog post where I MUST blame Judy for my behavior. She of course will deny anything to do with it but I believe I have a very rational explanation.

I had ordered the yarn I wanted from ESK’s black Friday sale. Just one kind for a specific pattern. It was a bargain between my $15 gift certificate and the 15% off I won for the sale. That was it; I was done yarn shopping.

Then Judy sends me this email this morning after I was feeling quite good about not going yarn shopping crazy:

“Just waiting to see if I can grab a few skeins of Wollmeise DK when that goes up.”

Wollmeise??? I didn’t remember seeing anything about Wollmeise in TLE update/email. So I went back to reread it and sure enough – some time today there would be a restock put up. If you know anything about Wollmeise – it doesn’t last long. I’m not partial to the sock yarn but the DK works so nice in other things and shows the stitch definition so well and it comes in larger than the norm hanks than most DK weights. So I just happened to click on the Wollmeise tab and lo and behold it was there! I believe the gray sky opened up and a beam of light from the heavens came shining down upon me. Yes – I was meant to buy some Wollmeise!!

Now – I know you have to be FAST! or it would be gone before you even got to check out. So I put a couple of one color in my cart and checked out. Success!!! Whew! that was fun. And being the good friend I am – I emailed Judy quickly saying “Wollmeise up!” just in case she wasn’t madly refreshing her screen every 10 minutes to see if it was up yet.

Then I looked and I was so distracted by the fact that there was actually Wollmeise on the site that I could get, I didn’t notice that I had some “loopy dollars” just waiting in my account to be used. Free yarn – who could pass that up.

So dare I try I again. Sure — go back to the Wollmeise page — many colors are gone already but I get some lovely green — check out, remember to apply loopy dollars this time — success again!!!!

But then — yes I should have walked away from the computer — but I didn’t and I’m looking at my Loopy Ewe rewards account and I’m so close to the next rewards level — at that level, one of the rewards is you become a “Loopy Legend” and get to have a yarn color designed for you (remember that bad influence Judy became a Loopy Legend earlier this year with her “Judy’s Favorite Quilt” yarn color — of which I had to buy some previously and of course that was her fault too!). I plan to never be that close to Legend status again, and it starts over at the end of each year, so you know what happened……..

Yes – I might as well place that last order to reach that level. Back to the Wollmeise page…. much slimmer pickings but I had success this time too – getting some single colors – I’m thinking maybe colorwork cowls and mittens.

Yes – I think it’s much safer that Judy is in Texas and I’m in Wisconsin. Can you imagine if we lived near each other and there was a yarn sale — we would both lose our “I hate shopping ways” and be headed down the road to do some serious yarn shopping and you know that if you are with a friend shopping you do far more damage than if you were by yourself. And if we both happened to live near the Loopy Ewe — Let’s not even think about that!!! Oh the horror! LOL

Then there was Lil’ Loopy looking quite smug, spinning around on the yearn yarn swift, clutching that credit card dreaming of all the Wollmeise he could be diving into when it starts to arrive. I finally wrestled the card away from him and hid it so he could not place any orders on his own!

I can’t wait until next week when the Boxes of Fun start arriving. Merry Christmas to me!

So I need to organize my Ravelry que and library one of these days – matching up yarn to projects I want to make since 2014 will be the year of “Knit from the Stash”.

I was working on a couple of things yesterday and last night. Here’s how far I got on the House Targaryen Socks I wound the yarn for Wednesday night. It’s a really easy pattern and hopefully I added enough stitches to enlarge it so that it will fit me because I don’t want to have to give a pair of socks in this lovely yarn away! I’m just a bit worried the stitch pattern might not give quite as much. But I love the look similar to cables but without cabling. And isn’t it nice that the needles match the yarn. LOL

I also decided to pull out my Dreambird yesterday evening. I’ve added two more background sections and a feather to it last night. I now have 23 feathers. I think I will add maybe two more and then call it done.

So what’s on your needles. See what others are working on over at Judy’s.

Hmmmmmm wonder how many skeins of yarn will be added to Judy’s yarn report next week from the ESK sale??? 😉

As for the rest of my day — some knitting I’m sure, I need to go peruse the stash to find some backing fabric for my nephew’s quilt and want to get that layered today. I need to actually get dressed so I can venture out to the mailbox (brr it’s 18 degrees right now), get rid of garbage and recycling — yes all those glamorous jobs.

While others have been standing out in the cold, waiting in lines, being made dizzy by the array of sale signs in the stores, at 8:00 a.m. I turned on the computer, opened up the Eat Sleep Knit website,, updated my cart to make sure the yarn I wanted was still there in the quantity I wanted, placed the order and by 8:02 a.m. my Black Friday Shopping was complete. 🙂 At 8:57 I got notification it has been completed and is shipping out today. I’d love to know how many 10K shoppers, who were able to shop an hour earlier than the general knitting community, were logged onto that site at 8:00 a.m. this morning and how many orders they received in that first hour. LOL (That is – shoppers other than Judy and I. ) 🙂

I stuck to my plan – I only bought some Tosh Vintage

to make Autumn Leaves Stole. I’ve got a milk chocolatey colored coat and I think this color may look good against that.

In addition to the Miss Babs I previously posted that I received this week (and those colors have been calling to me the last several days that they want to be used NOW! but so far I’ve ignored them), this arrived ….

On the left – the green is Stroll Tweed. It’s a fingering weight and will be for either (always subject to change of course by the time I actually get around to using it — but I bought it to make either a big snuggly wrap or there is enough for a sweater. The darker on the right is Wool of the Andes Tween in Farmhouse Heather. The color is slightly different in person – it’s sort of a brown but kind of reddish undertones maybe — it’s a unique shade of brown and was exactly want I was looking for to make Tivoli.

So you head out to the stores on Black Friday or whatever time in the week hours of the morning or night before that the stores now open. As you might imagine – since I hate shopping for just about anything (you know the exception is yarn and fabric of course) – I do not venture out that day. There’s no way I’d stand in line at 3 am (or any other time for that matter) to get in a store.

However I have been awaiting the ESK Black Friday sale announcement to see if they were doing it this year. 🙂 The email announcement has arrived so I’ve been doing some planning. You know both Judy (who also hates shopping) and I have been very good Black Friday customers in the past. LOL Our yarn stashes reflect that. It’s a yarn sale – those don’t happen often in my favorite online shops (or local yarn shops for that matter) – and then there’s the luck of the draw– the percentage off your order that you don’t know until after you’ve checked out — and the lure of that elusive 50% off or totally free order.

Here’s last year’s haul — and that photo reminds me the vest in that brown alpaca is waiting to be finished!

This year, I have a plan and no sock yarn or simply random buying is involved. I want to make this wrap so I’ll be buying the yarn for that – and that only – at least that’s my plan. If I end up with a big percentage off (plus I have some scratch ticket winnings on credit to use), then just maybe I’ll be tempted to order more. By worsted weight for that wrap – that is my shopping plan for tomorrow.

I have not spent all morning looking at patterns and trying to decide what yarn I want to use. The sewing room table is cleared off, room vacuumed, most of the other clutter in that room put back on shelves and in the closet where they belong.

And was there yarn that already arrived this week — yes my Miss Babbs arrived.

Aren’t those colors gorgeous! And doesn’t that little hank of sock yarn on the right look puny. LOL The sock yarn is Northumbria BFL and the color is Celebration. The middle is Babbette Yowza in Funny Papers and the one on the left is Babbette Yowza in Bat S**t Crazy. 🙂

And, after sitting around for close to 4 months, I finally cooked up the wireless router my parents sent for my birthday in July. 🙂 I kept forgetting to bring it home from the office and then I was a bit leery it would be a pain to set up. It did have some issues trying to connect so after repeated attempts of unplugging modems, replugging modems, unplugging router, changing cable to correct slot in router! 😉 – finally it connected so now I can move the computer about.

Wow in one year- updated from dial up to high speed internet and now wireless. Next thing you know I’ll really be hopping into this century and getting a cell phone….. no – don’t hold your breath for that one. LOL That won’t be happening. But since the sewing room gets so chilly in the winter I can just grab the lap top and take it in the other room now which will be really nice.

A very Happy Thanksgiving Day to all. A day to reflect on the blessings all around us.

As I was looking though EQ photos I found this one. The turkey kaleidoscope just makes me smile. I may need to actually stitch it up one of these years.

You can see the original “Pinfeather” wallhanging – done several years ago on the blog when I was doing the monthly themed wall hangings – made by my prolific friend Janet P in the Flickr group here . I’m pretty darn sure she has made more of my quilt designs then I have. LOL

I made good progress on the sock I started last night after I figured out what size I wanted to change it to. Several inches are now knit.

And this morning I was doing a bit of EQ playing working on a Christmas tree design. It’s just a preliminary start but here’s what it looks like so far.

Hmmm I may have to think about printing a few of these off on cards to send out for the holidays.

More coffee – get dressed – and then I think I’ll start clearing off the sewing room table. Just maybe I’ll get a quilt layered today or at least get things cleared away so I can have some room to work. The wind which is a bit nasty today is blowing on the sewing room side of the apartment and it’s definitely chilly in here! Last year at this time it was an exceptionally warm Thanksgiving — 60 degrees! A far cry from 20 degrees.

Oh and the store bought pumpkin pie – a MAJOR disappointment. How can they ruin pumpkin pie?! I tried it last night and when I took it out of the box it smelled oh so spicy and good but the crust was incredibly salty — okay I’ll eat the pumpkin without the crust — but the pumpkin was weird. It was almost the consistency of and sort of had a taste like it was pumpkin cheesecake not creamy pumpkin pie. Ick – it’s going to hit the trash can. Very disappointing indeed.

No – that’s not what I had for dinner! 🙂 It’s the color name of this yarn.

The colors are a bit darker than the flash makes them look but there’s a wide variety of colors. It’s been sitting in a basket on the bookshelf because I knew I wanted to make something with it fairly soon after I got it. Well I don’t know that it’s still “fairly soon” but I decided it needed to be wound into a ball tonight and after I finish this blog post, I’m going to put my jammies on, get my blankie and go get cozy in the big chair and knit for the rest of the night.

(Trust me – that’s the safest place for me – I just went to grab my bottle of diet Dr. Pepper and knocked it over on the table next to the computer. It splashed on the wall, just missed the phone modem box and power strip. Then I set it down quickly on the table which caused it to foam up all over the corner of the table. I grabbed this yarn up before it could get to the yarn, slid the computer over out of the path, as it then dripped to the carpet. SHEESH!!! Yes sitting quietly and knitting is PERHAPS safe.) LOL

There are plenty of socks in progress that could be worked on but then I’d have to go dig out that container, go somewhere else to find the pattern and it’s way more fun to start a new pair. So we’ll see how far I get before tomorrow’s – no wait – tomorrow is only Thursday so before Friday’s On the Needles post.

I’ll be all messed up on my days since I took Friday off work. There were far fewer bodies at the office today than the norm and they slowly started dwindling even more from noon on. First one boss left me, and when the second one came to tell me he was leaving I told him I would pretty much then lose the will to work. He totally agreed I should probably leave. LOL So checked the bus schedule and half hour later I was out the door. Stopped at the grocery store since I hadn’t picked up much last time I went, having forgotten I’d be home for a 4 day weekend — boy was that a zoo! But I’m well stocked again – if I don’t keep dumping over soda. Besides – I had forgotten to buy cranberry sauce!

I’ve been doing Weight Watchers for nearly two months and purposely didn’t buy the cranberry sauce last time I was at the store figuring it had to be very very bad (cause I don’t like the real berry stuff – it has to be jellied). But I actually checked before I went to the store and it was not as bad as I thought so I’ll have some with my Cornish Hen. I also decided I deserved pumpkin pie too. I didn’t want to make one because I knew if there was too much here I’d eat it but they had cute smaller pies at the store so I’m all set. But most importantly, the real reason I had to stop at the store — no coffee in the house. I cannot survive 4 days at home with no coffee! 🙂 Quilting, knitting — those tasks require intake of coffee periodically. And my favorite – Toasted Southern Pecan – on sale even so made it all worth the trip. Hmm maybe after putting on the jammies and before settling in the comfy chair some pie and coffee is in order……

Anyway – back to the socks — I’ll be making this pattern. I just love the texture in them and tho they look a bit cable-like, there are no cables (because yes you know I don’t like making cables).

Hope you have a relaxing even planned. Now to start the coffee pot, start a load of laundry (to throw in the towel that sopped up the soda), jammies, fill coffee cup, pie, comfy chair, knitting …. ……

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